So-called supercomputers share many characteristics with so-called ordinary computers, in that they comprise processing, memory, storage and communications elements. At this level of abstraction, supercomputers differ only in scale. One significant qualitative difference, however, lies in that, in the case of a supercomputer, the ratio of meaningful processing operations (one example of which is a floating point operation) to communication operations approaches unity, whereas in the case of, for example, a desktop PC, the ratio is usually at least as large as 64:1. It follows that the speed of the communications links can severely limit the speed of operation of a supercomputer and that, accordingly, supercomputers require extremely fast communication links between different processing nodes. Currently, fast communications links for supercomputers have relatively poor reliability and are the most frequent cause of failure. This is partly a direct consequence of the relatively low numbers in which they are manufactured (in turn consequent upon the relative rarity of supercomputers). The provision of redundant fast communications links to ameliorate unreliability is not preferred because, for a given processing node and communication link pairing of a supercomputer, the fast communication link constitutes a significant proportion of the cost.